


Nightmares and Night Talks

by bella_my_clarke



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke, Confessions, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Late-night talks, Nightmares, bellarke canonverse, platonic snuggling, s4, unapologetic hand-holding, uncensored heart eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7390672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bella_my_clarke/pseuds/bella_my_clarke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Bellamy has a nightmare, and for once he turns to someone to comfort him. That someone, of course, is Clarke)</p>
<p>She sunk onto one hip. “I was just sleeping, that’s all. Why would you need to be nervous?”</p>
<p>“I had a dream.”</p>
<p>“Ah.” She wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. Nightmares were delicate things, in her experience; they intertwined so closely with reality. “Do you want to talk about it?”</p>
<p>He bit his lip and Clarke noticed, randomly, he was just as handsome coming out of a restless sleep as a training room, or a patrol. “If you need to sleep…I was just checking to make sure you were all right. Honest.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares and Night Talks

Clarke was woken to the sound of rapid pounding and a voice calling her name urgently. “Just a minute,” she groaned, rolling out of bed, and went to the door. Upon opening it, she found Bellamy staring at her, his hair mussed from sleep and something wild lingering just behind his eyes. His breathing seemed uneven. “What is it?” she asked, a little more awake.

“I was knocking and you weren’t answering, and I….” He swallowed and began to address his bare feet. “I got nervous.”

She sunk onto one hip. “I was just sleeping, that’s all. Why would you need to be nervous?”

“I had a dream.”

“Ah.” She wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. Nightmares were delicate things, in her experience; they intertwined so closely with reality. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He bit his lip and Clarke noticed, randomly, he was just as handsome coming out of a restless sleep as a training room, or a patrol. “If you need to sleep…I was just checking to make sure you were all right. Honest.”

“Well, I’m fine,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “But seriously, Bellamy, if you want to talk about it we can. I’m not that tired.”

“Really? Because I was pounding on your door for a solid two minutes and all you did was snore,” he said, managing a small smile. Then he went soft, and she felt her heart do the same. “You sure?”

Clarke rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Of course. Come in.”

He stepped inside slowly, surveying the room, and she sat down on the bed. After a moment, he joined her. She waited for a moment, to see if he’d open up right away, but it seemed he needed a little prodding. “What was the dream about?”

“Well, I was back to when Roan had taken you,” he started, watching his hands. “When Monty and the others had found me going after you and were trying to convince me to come back to camp.”

Clarke frowned. “Wait. Before or after you found me in the cave?”

Bellamy hesitated, wincing. “After.”

She blinked, more confused than ever. “How would you have followed us? You got stabbed in the leg, and you had no weapons.”

“I had to try, didn’t I?”

Clarke opened her mouth, then closed it dumbly again. There was no proper response to something like that, no words she could use that could fully express the swelling in her chest, gratitude and shock and anger and longing all pressed together tightly. Instead, she inched closer to him, so that their arms touched.

“Well, anyway,” he said, seeming flustered, “in the dream they convinced me to go back, like in real life, and I got my leg bandaged, but then….” Bellamy swallowed hard, and his hands shook. Clarke had the distinct urge to calm them with her own. “They told me Roan had grown impatient. Slit your throat. ‘The mighty Wanheda has fallen,’ they said. Of course I denied it for as long as I could, but a few days later they brought your body to the gates….” His voice cut off, and his whole body seemed to be shaking now. In his eyes she could almost see the scene: her limp, bloody body thrown in front of him, the disbelief and then stabbing hollowness when no argument could dispel the fact that it was real. She saw it clearly.

Of all people, Clarke knew what it was like to see someone you cared about dead.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, and put her hand over his. “It wasn’t real.”

“It looked real,” he murmured, still caught in the wake of his nightmare. “And it could’ve been real, too. Roan could’ve killed you, or someone else could’ve, and it would’ve been because of me. Because I was too cowardly to keep going.”

“No.” She was appalled more than anything. “None of that was, or would be, your fault, Bellamy.”

“Yes it would,” he said, with the air of someone who had already decided they’d lost every battle they hoped to fight. “You would be dead, and I would be the one who didn’t prevent it.”

The sheer wrongness of his words, of his thoughts, almost made Clarke angry; almost made her want to slap the negativity out of him somehow. But she breathed out slowly instead. She didn’t want to yell at him, she didn’t want to hurt him, and she didn’t want to be angry. She just wanted him to see himself the way she saw him. Resting her head on his shoulder, she murmured, “We can’t prevent every bad thing, Bellamy. All we can do is learn from them.”

He intertwined his fingers with hers and squeezed. After a moment, he said, quiet but determined, “I won’t let anyone hurt you again, Clarke.”

“Neither will I.” She hesitated, rubbing his hand with her thumb, then added, “I’m not going to leave you again, you know.”

He rested his head on hers and let out a breath. He didn’t confirm her statement, and she knew why. Hope was such a hard thing for Bellamy, almost as hard as forgiveness. He couldn’t risk breaking again.

“Clarke,” he whispered after a while. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said, and her heart finally felt warm.

Neither of them seemed ready to part after that, so they started talking about their day, and how Monty’s moonshine tasted stranger every time he offered them some, and the strange, deformed animals Bellamy had seen on patrol. They talked about everything from Miller’s antics to the confusion with Monty and Harper’s newfangled relationship, and when they ran out of things to say, they just sat in comfortable silence. Eventually, they got uncomfortable sitting without a backrest, so they moved to the head of the bed, but they fell right back into the position they had been before, like they were meant to be there. Bellamy’s hand was like a heartbeat in hers.

Slowly, Clarke felt herself falling asleep, but she didn’t care. No demons would find her here, with Bellamy’s thumb drawing circles on the back of her hand and his breath near her face. She was safe.

-

Bellamy opened his eyes slowly, brain fuzzy from sleep. The first thing he processed was a face nestled against his collarbone, the warm tickle of breath teasing his collar; the smell of fresh earth and paint and sweat affirmed it was Clarke curled against him. Their hands had not come apart in sleep. Looking down at her, with her hair brushing his chin and her chest rising and falling against his, he felt a smile play at his features. For the first time since…forever, maybe, he had slept peacefully.

“Clarke,” he whispered gently, knowing they probably needed to get up soon. “Wake up.”

She only groaned, snuggling farther into his chest in protest.

“Clarke,” he repeated with half a chuckle. He’d seen many sides of Clarke, but unusually affectionate straight out of sleep was a new one on her. He liked it.

“Fine, fine,” she muttered, her lips brushing his bare skin briefly, and he wondered if she could hear his heartbeat quicken. She pushed herself up and stared at him through narrowed eyes. “You look like a mess.”

“Same to you,” he said, even though her tangled hair and wrinkled shirt were more endearing to him than anything, and she managed a smile. He gave her hand a final squeeze, then untangled his fingers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Another day.”

“A good one, though, I think,” she replied, standing and stretching out sleep-sore muscles. He watched her with a soft smile, and for a moment he wondered if this was what it was like to be married, if saying _I do_ meant the promise of late-night conversations and hand-holding and playful teasing and that feeling deep in the root of your chest, that overflowing swell of love and contentment that the person in front of you would be there every day for the rest of your life.

If it was, Bellamy thought, it couldn’t be so bad.

“You need to get moving, lazy,” Clarke warned him, rummaging through a drawer. “If we’re not dressed and ready to go in twenty minutes, we’ll get one of those disapproving father talks from Kane.”

Bellamy obediently got up and moved to go, but she caught his wrist just before he opened the door. “Hey,” she said gently, “we got this, okay?” Then, after a moment, she lifted onto her toes and kissed his cheek.

“I know,” he replied, grinning even before he was out the door.

_No, not bad at all._


End file.
